Stefanie Feldman, a longtime Biden aide, will serve in a leading role.

President Joe Biden will announce the creation of the first-ever federal office of gun violence prevention on Friday, fulfilling a key demand of gun safety activists as legislation remains stalled in Congress, according to two people with direct knowledge of the White House’s plans.

Stefanie Feldman, a longtime Biden aide who previously worked on the Domestic Policy Council, will play a leading role, the people said.

Greg Jackson, executive director of the Community Justice Action Fund, and Rob Wilcox, the senior director for federal government affairs at Everytown for Gun Safety, are expected to hold key roles in the office alongside Feldman, who has worked on gun policy for more than a decade and still oversees the policy portfolio at the White House. The creation of the office was first reported by The Washington Post.

  • randon31415@lemmy.world
    344·
    2 years ago

    Next time a Republican takes office they will set this department’s budget to 1 dollar, just like the consumer protection bureau. It will get to the point that parts of the government will only work when dems are in charge.

    • Hazdaz@lemmy.world
      61·
      2 years ago

      That’s “Starve the Beast” politics.

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starve_the_beast

      Everyone should know what this is and how and why it is done.

      In short, Republicans want to starve a department of funding to a level below which they can not properly function. Then they can claim that agency isn’t doing it’s job, so we might as well cut it altogether. They are trying to set up these departments and programs to fail and can come in and claim they are saving taxpayers money. What they are really doing is making it easier for corporations and the ultra rich to pollute or side-step their tax obligations. Kind of hard to claim someone is a tax cheat if there isn’t an IRS to audit them. Same with the EPA, Amtrak, USPS, DoEducation, and a host of other departments.

      Once again, we can thank Reagan for this mess.

  • havokdj@lemmy.world
    82·
    2 years ago

    Great idea, but I do not have faith that this will be well executed.

    If the democrats had the same drive as their republican counterparts, this would be a better country.

  • SheeEttin@lemmy.worldEnglish
    93·
    2 years ago

    From the WaPo article:

    The new office will report up through Stefanie Feldman, the White House staff secretary and a longtime Biden policy aide who has worked on the firearms issue for years, the people said. Feldman previously worked on the Domestic Policy Council and still oversees the gun policy portfolio at the White House.

    So it’s going to be a purely policy role within the White House? Well that’s disappointing. I was hoping it was going to be somewhere in HHS, or at least DoJ.

    • ryathal@sh.itjust.works
      9·
      2 years ago

      That would likely require explicit funding. Yes this is just to make a headline. He could actually direct the ATF to follow up on straw purchases, improve data sync with NICS and other federal databases if he wanted to do something meaningful.

  • chiliedogg@lemmy.world
    23·
    2 years ago

    The only reason the GOP is as powerful as it is is because the Dems are so fucking terrible at playing the damn game. Pick your battles. Good idea or not - Biden is trying real hard to lose this election.

    The biggest single-issue voting blocks in the county are pro-lifers and pro-gun people. Even if most people want stronger gun control and better abortion access, they don’t base the entirety of their votes on those positions. It’s not like Dems or moderates who are anti-gun would vote for Trump or Biden were pro-gun.

    The only time being pro gun-control is advantageous is in a primary, which Biden doesn’t have to worry about. In the general election it’s entirely detrimental to a campaign.

  • Shadywack@lemmy.worldEnglish
    222·
    2 years ago

    Hopefully he can stay awake and read the teleprompter, and do exactly as he’s told.

    • Lemminary@lemmy.world
      2·
      2 years ago

      Honest question: has he ever fallen asleep at the job? Because it seems that Trump came up with the moniker to slander him and everybody started pretending that he had

      • Shadywack@lemmy.worldEnglish
        12·
        2 years ago

        Everytime I see footage of him lately, he doesn’t know where he is, where he’s suppose to be, and he’s obviously asking what he’s suppose to do.

          • Shadywack@lemmy.worldEnglish
            11·
            2 years ago

            I sure can, the question is can you accept that the last two Presidents are dipshit puppets?

                • Lemminary@lemmy.world
                  31·
                  2 years ago

                  Wait, what? What is this about? I’m asking about all this “recent footage” of the guy sleeping on the job and all I get is some biased YouTuber really stretching the truth and blatantly misrepresenting pieces of footage for what could have many interpretations about him. I could gather footage of most world leaders alive who have fumbled, tripped, or randomly paused mid-speech, edit it and make them look really dumb. But all I’m seeing is that what you’re accusing Biden of is simply not true and that it comes from Trump. The topic is the moniker “sleepy Joe” in case we forgot what we’re talking about.

                  Listen, I’m not here to take the man’s side–he’s not even my president. But you guys really seem like you get off on making things up about him for the sake of it. Let’s be grown ups and speak about things that have actually happened instead of falling for the lying orange man’s circlejerk. Why is Biden “sleepy”? My question was dead-simple.